Culture and identity in critical remarks

Abstract

Awareness of cultural specificity in current classroom discourse is particularly important in an educational setting that has become largely multicultural due to globalization, migration and academic mobility. Drawing on the intercultural and cross-cultural pragmatics, and cultural studies, this paper explores the speech act of critical remark in Russian and Israeli classroom settings, focusing on students’ view of its degree of conventionality and admissibility. Data were obtained from a student survey questionnaire (undertaken between 2017-2019). Highlighting similarities and differences, we argue that both Russian and Israeli classroom settings exhibit critical remark as not uncommon, though varying in acceptability. Findings show that critical acts need not be limited to the merely conflictual, but may even be perceived positively, and may moreover exert varying levels of illocutionary force and be interpreted differently by different cultural groups.